With the recipes in this book, you can take full advantage of the vast collection of community-contributed modules that make the Drupal web framework useful and unique. You'll get the information you need about how to combine modules in interesting ways (with a minimum of code-wrangling) to develop a variety of community-driven websites. Each chapter describes a case study and outlines specific requirements for one of several projects included in the book -- a wiki, publishing workflow site, photo gallery, product review site, online store, user group site, and more. With Using Drupal, you will:

Get an overview of Drupal concepts and key modules introduced in each chapter, with a bird's-eye view of each module's specialty and how it works

Explore various solutions within Drupal that meet the requirements for the project, with details about which modules are selected and why

Learn how to configure modules, with step-by-step recipes for building the precise functionality the project requires

Get information on additional modules that will make the project even more powerful

Be able to access the modules used in the chapter, along with other resources

Newcomers will find a thorough introduction to the framework, while experienced Drupal developers will learn best practices for building powerful websites. With Using Drupal, you'll find concrete and creative solutions for developing the exact community website you have in mind.

Angela Byron

Angela Byron is an open source evangelist, and has been called a Drupal freak by those in the know. She got her start as a Google Summer of Code student in 2005 and since then, she has immersed herself in the Drupal community. Her work includes coding and reviewing patches, creating and contributing to modules and themes, testing and quality assurance efforts within the project, improving documentation, and providing user support on forums and IRC. Angela is on the Board of Directors for the Drupal Association, and helps drive community growth by leading initiatives to help get new contributors involved. She is a sought-after lecturer on many themes, especially the topic of women in Open Source.

Addison Berry

Addison Berry is deeply involved with Drupal and takes part in many aspects of both the software and the community. She contributes patches to core Drupal, maintains several contributed modules, and is active in various mentoring programs such as the Drupal Dojo group and Google's Highly Open Participation (GHOP) program. Addison helps maintain the drupal.org website, and is a permanent member of the Drupal Association General Assembly. Her work focuses on improving Drupal documentation and she has worked to provide a wide range of tutorials covering all aspects of Drupal from community involvement to code.

Nathan Haug

Nathan Haug is one of the forefront user-interface developers in the Drupal project. His interest in combining design and software implementation led him to complete undergraduate degrees in both Visual Communications and Computer Science. Using these skills he developed significant UI improvements for the Drupal 6 release, including Drupal's drag-and-drop implementation and a framework for easy AJAX-like behaviors. Nathan is considered the leading JavaScript developer in the Drupal project. In 2007, he led a development team at SonyBMG to build a Drupal-based platform for community websites around each of SonyBMG's music artists. He spends much of his time working between popular contribute modules such as Fivestar and Webform, or working to improve functionality in Drupal core.

Jeff Eaton

Jeff Eaton has been building software for the Internet and desktop applications for over a decade. He's participated in projects ranging from web-portals for communities and nonprofits, to enterprise client-server applications for retail industries, to large-scale web applications for companies like Dow AgroSciences and the Chicago Board of Trade. In 2005, he began developing solutions based on the open-source Drupal content management framework. In the years since, he's become a core developer for the Drupal project, specializing in architecture and API development. In his capacity as a consultant for Lullabot Consulting, LLC, he's helped plan and build the software infrastructure for Drupal sites including MTVUK's music portal, SonyBMG's artist site platform, and Fast Company's groundbreaking business networking site.

James Walker

Passionate about both technology and teaching, James Walker is Lullabot's Director of Education where he oversees the company's public workshops, seminars and private Drupal trainings. A leader in the Drupal community, James is a founding member of the non-profit Drupal Association and the Drupal security team. As a long time member of the Drupal community, James maintains over a dozen modules and has contributed countless patches to Drupal core. A long time believer in Open Source and Open Standards, James has spent years co-ordinating Drupal's involvement with other communities such as Jabber/XMPP and, most recently, OpenID. An engaging speaker, James is a frequently requested presenter at many types of technical conferences. His humorous and informative lectures have been among the most well-attended at DrupalCons, starting with the first - four years ago.

Jeff Robbins

Jeff Robbins is co-founder and CEO of Lullabot. He worked at O'Reilly & Associates as an illustrator and systems administrator as the world wide web came into being. He was involved in the early stages of the first commercial website, O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator, but left to start one of the first web design companies, Liquid Media, in 1993.

Considered by many to be the voice of Drupal, Jeff hosts Lullabot's weekly Drupal podcast, the #1 Drupal podcast in the world. Additionally, he has contributed over 20 Drupal modules and themes.

The animal on the cover of Using Drupal is a dormouse. Dormice are part of the Gliridae family and originally come from Africa and Southern Europe. There are many species of this rodent, but the most popular and common one on the pet market is the African dormouse. The other known dormice are the "common dormouse" or the "hazel mouse" and most resemble small squirrels. Their name is derived from the French word dormir, which means to sleep-significant because dormice hibernate for as long as six months, or longer if the weather is cool, awaking only briefly to eat food they stored nearby. During the summer months, they accumulate fat in their bodies allowing them to hibernate for such long periods of time.On average, dormice are about four inches long, not including the two-inch bushy tail. They have rounded ears, large eyes, and their fur is thick and soft and reddish brown in color. Dormice have an excellent sense of hearing and use a range of different vocalizations to signal each other. They are very playful, social, and personable animals (more so if you raise them from a young age). Their playfulness consists of flips, climbing rope, and leaping and jumping; they are nocturnal so they play mostly at night. Being left alone may cause them to become stressed and unhappy, as they thrive on interaction with others.Dormice feed on fruit, insects, berries, flowers, seeds, and nuts, and they are especially partial to hazelnuts. They are unique among other rodents because they lack a "cecum," a pouch connected to the colon of the large intestine, which is used in fermenting vegetable matter. Dormice breed once or twice a year and produce an average litter of four young. Their average lifespan is a somewhat short five years. They are born hairless, and their eyes don't open until about 18 days after birth, rendering them helpless at birth. They become sexually mature after the end of their first hibernation.

Drupal is a fast-moving target, so writing a book about it is especially challenging. These authors know what they are doing, as they are all long time Drupal jockeys, deeply involved with core development, the Drupal community, and with Drupal education. With six different authors, it's refreshing that they have been able to combine their points of view into such a well-integrated publication.

Content structure is what Drupal is all about, and the authors have also structured their book's content to make it easily accessible. After the first chapter, each is presented with the same sectional structure, beginning with a case study, a common real-world problem that Drupal might be asked to solve. This structure next leads to alternative implementation strategies, then focuses on the features of recommended modules. In their "Hands-on" section, the authors next show how to configure the modules. The chapters, each on a different case study, end with references to other modules that might further enhance functionality. Each chapter ends with a summation, including links to the modules discussed. In the course of describing solutions to the problems introduced by the case studies, the authors take the reader (with little redundancy) through many general aspects of planning and implementing a Drupal site.

The authors' choice of case studies makes the book particularly valuable, as they cover a range of very common content management situations, including: a job posting board, product reviews, a wiki, managing publishing workflow, a photo gallery, multilingual sites, event management, and an online store.

Site functionality is the focus of most of the book, but the last chapter addresses more the topic of presentation, in Drupal-speak, Theming. This chapter requires some knowledge of CSS, HTML and PHP to fully understand how to modify existing themes (of which there are many). There is reference to where you can learn more about these topics, as well as some code that you can copy, but the authors do not attempt to write a primer on web coding.

Before the index, the book ends with three Appendices. The first addresses Drupal installation and maintenance. The second gives advice on choosing and evaluating modules that you might want to use for your own purpose. Since many modules are contributed by users in the Drupal community, coding quality, bug fixes, etc. can vary considerably, and the user is well-advised to apply "due diligence" as introduced in this appendix. The third appendix is a list of modules and themes used in the book, along with where to get them and their source code.

Using Drupal is targeted at readers "somewhere between total newbie and computer science professor", and is a surprisingly accessible practical introduction to Drupal as a platform. The writing style is succinct but easy to read, without the cutesy fluff so often found in how-to technical writing for the masses. The presentation reflects the authors' continuing involvement in Drupal education and in the growing Drupal community.

I used a library copy extensively for a project and recently got my own reviewer's copy through a club I belong to.

Overall the printed version of the book is useful for wading your way through the intricacies and countless number of plug-ins offered in Drupal. However I have to add this caveat, the book lacks cohesion and tends to ramble back and forth and gives the impression that it was written on the fly as each author worked their way through whatever section they were charged with. This writing style and lack of decent editing makes the book extremely difficult to follow. Coupled with omissions in work flow, poor and unclear grammar, and lack of decent descriptions makes it a difficult read.

The preface specifies who this book is written for and then it just delivers. If you are a newbie to Drupal but with some developer or web background, then you can learn from it. Want to know what Drupal is about but have no interest in getting hands on? Want to start working with Drupal? Want to expand your present knowledge of Drupal? This is the book for you.

The authors not only cover Drupal, its abilities and how to use it, but they also recommend modules and describe how to install and use them. They also regularly and appropriately add in interesting tips and tidbits to expand the basic message.

The writing is clear and concise, the information is arranged in easily digested segments and finding information after reading is possible. Between its chapter descriptions and the index, I can find the information I need, something that isn't always easy in technical books.

I had Drupal installed for a few weeks before buying this book, and even going through online tutorials and the Drupal forum, I had a tough time "getting it".

After reading Chapters 1 and 2, learning the very basics, it started making sense.

I jumped to Chapter 10 and successfully got Ubercart installed and setup. Could NOT have done this at all without this book.

Now I'm back to Chapter 3, learning CCK and Views, and wow, that is SUPER COOL. Next I'll be at Chapter 7 learning the photo gallery.

Those chapters alone are enough for me, but I'll probably go through the others later.

I will say that the "Using Drupal" forum seems a bit dead, I've posted a few things there and gotten no replies. I figured with six book authors at least one of them or other users would be hanging out in the forum some.

This is a very good book... the only piece that is missing is about how to create a forum. There are a lot of ways and I thought that O'Reilly, at least, have spoken about one... it hasn't. Well, is still a good book, and great if you don't need a forum ;)